Australia/Israel & Jewish Affairs Council

Contrary to recent headlines, the Arab League as a collective body did not substantially "sweeten" its 2002 Peace Initiative (API) for Israel on Monday. Nonetheless, there is some reason to see this diplomatic movement, while relatively minor, as a small, positive step.

Through resource management, innovation and planning, the Israeli water authorities ... have now beaten the intense drought which has gripped the country for several years. Now, the Israeli example stands ready to help others in the region to do the same. Unfortunately, not everyone is ready to take

The parliamentary elections in Jordan on Jan. 23, 2013 failed to produce a clear answer as to the impact of the Arab uprisings on the Kingdom's real balance of power between the establishment, headed by King Abdullah, and the opposition, led by the Muslim Brotherhood. Both sides stayed deeply entren

The Pew Research Centre's Global Attitudes Project has just released the results of surveys it conducted throughout the Middle East in the wake of the "Arab Spring." The surveys reveal some interesting insights about attitudes in the Middle East in the wake of the recent uprisings, including how Mid

Did Israel's government covet the land it captured as part of the defensive war of June 1967, which ended with Israeli forces in control of the Sinai Peninsula, Golan Heights, West Bank and Gaza? For the most part, not at all, according to 200 pages of newly declassified transcripts from cabinet an

Jerusalem Post Palestinian affairs correspondent Khaled Abu Toameh has recently been writing prolifically on the oppression of the Palestinian people. Unusually for an Arab writer broaching this subject matter, while he does have some criticisms of Israel, the Israelies are not the primary objects o

The recent controversy over a house in the West Bank city of Hebron is having severe consequences for one unfortunate Palestinian. There was an outcry when Israeli settlers purchased and moved into a house in the "Arab" section of Hebron, ending with their eviction in a controversial move by Israeli

On a family rip back to Australia, Gidon Bromberg, an Australian environmental activist now living in Israel, picked up a copy of Chris Hammer's book The River: A Journey Through The Murray-Darling. Bromberg was inspired by Hammer's description of the process that led to the Federal Government

Today: The Merchant of Venice, Kuwaiti elections, Jordanian Palestinians and civil wars in Yemen and Syria.

Fascinating reports, interesting analysis and some stories that are just plain funny: a round-up of items from today's media.

An AFP report yesterday indicated that, as predicted, Hamas and Fatah are dragging their feet on actually implementing the latest reconciliation deal. This suggests that the current deal will go the way of the three previous deals: all have been introduced to much fanfare and then quietly lapsed as

In December 2011, reports from several directions converged to suggest that Hamas is abandoning the sinking ship of Syria: that many senior cadres have already settled in Gaza and only the upper echelon of leadership that bears symbolic meaning still remains in Damascus. By and large those reports a

This Update provides analysis of the increasingly "Arab Spring" instability which seems to be developing across the Middle East - in Egypt, Syria and Jordan. First up are Washington Institute experts David Schenker and Eric Trager on the background and implications to the re-ignition of

Many reactions in the Palestinian street and media to the release of prisoners in exchange for the release of abducted Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit reveal a worrying and disturbing narrative of glorification of the returning terrorists and support for their heinous crimes and violent ways. Calls for

It won't stop the revisionist propaganda underpinning the Palestinian unilateral declaration of independence campaign, but newspaper accounts from 1949 prove that the nascent State of Israel supported the establishment of a Palestinian state on the West Bank and Gaza and opposed the land being absor

The Palestinian Authority (PA) "is broke", and according to a recent New York Times article, "the immediate cause of the crisis is the failure of foreign - especially Arab - donors to fulfill promises of aid." According to AP, Arab donations have decreased dramatically over the past couple years, as

Despite mass violence in Libya, Syria, and Yemen, and leadership changes occurring in Egypt and Tunisia, Jordan has remained relatively quiet, with only limited protests and few deaths. As the Guardian points out: Jordan has seen sporadic unrest since January but only on a small scale. Opposition d

Hannah Rosenthal, the US State Department's Special Envoy to Monitor and Combat anti-Semitism, has just completed a visit to Lebanon, Jordan and Saudi Arabia in a bid to reduce the antisemitic content of their education syllabuses. As she told JTA, the State Department has found the textbooks produc

Jerusalem has always been used as a pretext for conspiracy theories and propaganda campaigns against Israel in the Arab world. A perennial claim throughout the Arab-Israel conflict is that something Israel is doing presages the destruction of Muslim holy sites in Jerusalem.

This Update moves beyond a focus on the immediate drama continuing in Egypt to look at the changing realities across the Middle East. First up, the alway insightful Robert Satloff - head of the Washington Insitute for Near East Policy - offers a set of new ideas for US policy